


Soup For Lunch

by Sengachi



Series: Lonely Wasteland [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, f/f - Freeform, much fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 15:36:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6290134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sengachi/pseuds/Sengachi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is part of a larger work that I'm not sure I'll ever write and I wanted to write a short scene between two of the characters. It's lacking some of the context that would be present in the larger story, but I decided to post it as is anyway. </p><p>If you're looking for something connected to the greater Fallout setting, this probably isn't what you're looking for. If you want to read some short fluff, this is for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soup For Lunch

**** Coraline swallows her fears and climbs. She ignores the needles tickling her feet and the weight filling her stomach. Just one foot at a time, eyes on the rungs of the ladder and not the ground. 

She reaches the top of the ladder and grabs the lip of the watchtower’s nest with a sweaty hand. She slings her gun over and in first, then readies herself to follow it. She makes a few aborted motions with her leg before swinging herself up and over. The tower sways as she tumbles in. 

Coraline lays flat on the nest’s floor and breathes. She wipes her hands on her cloak, once, twice, three times, before giving it up as a lost cause. Deep breaths, eyes fixed on the coarse wood, in and out. She pointedly does not think about the climb back down, which is always worse. 

The muscles in her arms twitch and jerk as she levers herself up, little spasms from her forearms to her shoulders. She swallows and clenches her fists hard to drive out the weakness in her limbs. 

Looking out on the surrounding terrain isn’t bad. It’s the feet which always get her, she needs something solid to stand on, something she can root in. Even the jostle-sway of the tower as she moves is tolerable, so long as it doesn’t send pins running through her feet. 

She settles with her back against the low wall of the tower’s nest, pulling her gun up next to her. Then she cracks her neck and twists in place to pop her back, before moveing on to her knuckles. Her ankles crackle as her stretches her legs last. 

Morning ritual complete, Coraline clenches a muscle she doesn’t have and feels a corresponding tingle from her Pip-Boy. There’s a faint liquid ripple on the edge of hearing and she bleeds out of the world, leaving behind nothing but a hollow outline. Honestly she should do that before climbing into the tower but she just can’t bring herself to scale the ladder with invisible feet. The thought alone is enough to set her feet tingling.

Coraline breathes deep, enjoying the way her back stretches without pulling tight around unpopped joints. She rolls her neck one more time, in case she missed any joints the first time around. She didn’t, but she does feel a little less tense. She wipes her hands dry on her cloak again and this time they stay dry. 

She breathes deep a few more times, settling into a steady rhythm. In, out. In, out. Coraline relaxes for a minute, listening to faint sounds of the wind and the creak of tower. It’s peaceful up here. She could almost fall back asleep, the sun hasn’t risen all the way and it’s dark enough for the edge of sleep to be tempting.

Instead she opens her eyes and focuses. V.A.T.S. comes as effortlessly as always, the world slowing, outlines sharpening. She doesn’t let the V.A.T.S. trance take her all the way though, riding the edge of altered awareness. She could count heartbeats like this, pick out the back and forth sway of an individual stalk of grass, each moment stretching out into forever. Instead she waits, seconds slipping through her fingers. 

A bird takes flight and snaps into focus. Its movement carves an outline around it, highlighting it for Coraline to track each beat of its wings. And then it’s gone, passed overhead and out of her field of vision. A rabbit twitches, a fox and her cubs make their way from their den, a doe picks its way through the foothills at the very edge of her sight. She watches all of it crawl through her vision, here one moment and gone in the next. 

The stretched out time slips by. Clouds billow and race in slow-motion, shadows pull into their roots, and then-

“Coraline! I have lunch!” 

Coraline blinks. She works her jaw and tries to chase the dryness from her mouth. She stretches, arms over her head and toes pointed out as far as they’ll go. After working out the soreness in her limbs she scoots away from the ladder so Abby can come over the edge. 

Abby fairly leaps over the edge, setting the whole tower rocking. Coraline grits her teeth and clutches at the floor. 

Abby blinks around the watchtower’s nest. “Coraline,” she draws out, “I can’t see you.” 

A yawn coincides with Coraline’s return to visibility. “Sorry,” she says, “it’s easy to forget.” 

Abby yawns too. “Dammit, you’re contagious.” 

That draws a faint smile from Coraline before she asks, “So what’s for lunch?”

Abby raises a finger before pausing. “I … left it down there. One moment.” And with that Abby is back out of the tower and sliding down towards the ground. “Sorry!” 

Coraline would say something snarky but another yawn cuts through it. Abby is back up the ladder with a basket before Coraline can think of anything good anyway. 

Abby smiles widely and Coraline can’t help smiling in return. Abby opens the basket up and says, “Well at least I didn’t forget the basket all the way back in camp. Let’s see, what did Madge pack today? Oh, today looks like more of that soup from last night! That was good!”

Coraline shifts over to sit next to Abby and accepts a warm plastic bowl with a tight lid. She presses shoulder to shoulder with Abby as Abby fishes out her own bowl. They crack the lids and Coraline breathes deep, enjoying the soup’s spices and Abby’s closeness. 

Coraline accepts a spoon from Abby and takes big gulping mouthfuls of Madge’s soup. All of a sudden she’s ravenous, hunger driving the slowness from her limbs and the tiredness from her eyes. 

Abby sips from her own soup before asking “So what did you see today?”

Coraline slips easily into conversation, speaking between mouthfuls of soup. She talks about the birds she saw, the fox and its cubs, a pack of dogs on the far horizon, the way the rising sun lit the mountains up, and the way the morning wind pulled at the clouds. 

Abby finishes her soup first and leans over Coraline, putting an arm across her shoulder and resting her cheek on Coraline’s head. Coraline keeps talking as the soup heats a pit of warmth in her stomach. It’s easy for her to ramble on with Abby making quiet noises of acknowledgement and her smiles teasing Coraline’s hair. 

It’s not really important what Coraline is saying, she’s not putting any thought into what she says, but Abby listens anyway. Coraline is talking more for Abby than herself actually. Coraline would be just as happy eating in silence, held by Abby. But Abby was never as much one for silence and likes the sound of Coraline’s voice besides. So Coraline chatters on. 

Eventually Coraline finishes her soup and the bowl grows cold. Abby kisses her goodbye and climbs back down the ladder, shaking the tower as she goes. 

Coraline pulls her cloak in tight around the warmth inside her. She’s smiling as she vanishes from the world and returns to her watch. 

  
  
  



End file.
